Paul: 'Seriously' weighing 2016 bid

Before Thursday, Rand Paul — tea party firebrand — hadn’t vaulted into the top tier of Republican power players.

But all that seemed to change this week. The Kentucky Republican senator showed serious clout by holding a 13-hour filibuster to delay the confirmation of President Barack Obama’s candidate to head the CIA, John Brennan.

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Paul himself seemed to appreciate that this was an important moment for himself, confidently acknowledging to POLITICO in an interview that he was “seriously” considering running for president in 2016.

“I think our party needs something new, fresh and different,” he said. “What we’ve been running — nothing against the candidates necessarily — but we have a good, solid niche in all the solidly red states throughout the middle of the country.”

But he suggested previous Republican candidates have had limited appeal to voters beyond the Republican base.

“We have to figure out how to appeal to the West Coast, New England [and] around the Great Lakes area. We need to figure out how to appeal to the blue-collar voters that voted — that were Democrats that voted for Reagan and I think are drifting back because they see us as the party of the wealthy. … I do want to be part of making the Republican Party again more of a national party, less than a regional party, which I think we’re in danger of becoming.”

Paul appeared genuinely stunned Thursday by both the amount of positive attention he was getting on the filibuster and the support he received from his colleagues.

Before long, it was clear that Paul’s one-man crusade was moving from the outside to the mainstream, as he was joined by one of the GOP stars and a potential 2016 competitor, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, as well as a Democrat, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden. Within hours, Twitter was ablaze with #StandWithRand, support from conservatives, and mainstream Republicans and tea partiers were fundraising off his name.

Sen. John Thune, who is also mentioned as presidential timber, said the filibuster was “enormously helpful” to Paul. “Standing in there, hanging in there — taking punches, fighting the good fight, always, I think, is helpful to the people whose views you’re trying to represent out there. … It’s a deeply held principle with him,” said Thune. “And I think it’s kind of contagious. A lot of people, when they saw him going and going and going, people were saying, ‘Wow, if he’s going to keep this going, we want to go down and help him out.’”

“I don’t think you can underestimate how big of a moment this was. If the Iowa Caucuses were tomorrow, he would win in a landslide,” said conservative talk radio host Steve Deace, who lives in Iowa. “Imagine taking what Scott Walker did in Wisconsin and combining it with what Mike Huckabee did with Chick-fil-A, that’s how big this is.”

Deace added that the grass roots have been yearning for a Republican in Washington to show he has a backbone, “and he did that [Wednesday] night,” he said.